Irresistible Forces

As the camera scanned the attentive crowd, Jenny saw Tom, Rolo, Yas — a bunch of Dan's friends — at a table. They would be coming up with some way to help him.

She ran to catch a tram, aware that she'd made one decision. The man by the fire was Dan. And that meant she had to help him, no matter what the situation.

She was soon pushing into the crowded room, looking for the others but keeping an eye on the screens. She paused a moment to listen to the committee. Surprise, surprise. They weren't getting anywhere fast.

Where were the others?

Then someone shouted, 'Jenny!' and she saw Gyrth standing and waving.

She made her way over, and those on one side wriggled together so she could squeeze in on the end of the bench.

The mood was grim. 'It's not going well?' she asked.

Gyrth poured her a beer. 'Who knows? At this rate they'll probably talk until the next blighter attack.'

'The blighters are gone.'

'Whatever.'

Jenny took a deep drink. 'Are they going to let Dan in?'

'Probably not.'

'Then what are we going to do?'

Everyone looked at her blankly.

'What can anyone do?' Rolo asked.

'Argue. Protest! They can't keep a hero out.'

'When Sillitoe argued that, Alderman Potts came up with the bright idea that we can't welcome home a hero of the Hellbane Wars without adequate preparation. He wants Dan to go away until we're ready.'

Jenny groaned. 'Let's form another committee.'

No one laughed.

Jenny eyed them all. 'We could sneak him in.'

Instead of approval, eyes and bodies shifted.

'That wouldn't be right,' Gyrth said. 'It would be… undignified.'

'It's not very dignified to leave him sitting out on the grass, is it?' She stared around. 'Let's do form a bloody committee.'

'Don't take that tone!' Yas leaned forward, poking a long, beringed finger onto the table. 'It's not a simple matter, and if you think it is, you're naive. None of us know what Dan is now. Perhaps he is dangerous.'

'You know better than that!'

'It's because I know better that I'm wary. There's more to him than the laughing friend, you know.'

Jenny was shocked by her own outrage at Yas's claim. But none of them knew what had happened that last night. Perhaps she should tell them, but she couldn't do it. Perhaps they wouldn't even believe her.

'He's bound to be different, Jenny,' Tom said gently.

'I suppose.'

Then Rolo said something about there being more point watching cricket, and Yas turned it to office politics. In moments three different conversations were going on around the table, none of them about Dan.

If his closest friends didn't care, what could she do, especially when she knew better than any that Dan could be changed, would be changed. Not into a vampire or a ghoul, but in power. He'd begun the shift before he left.

Wild magic.

Then a screen section closed in on the long, severe face of Alice Cotrell. Jenny rolled her eyes. Mrs. Cotrell was a great one for drawing up petitions and addressing committees.

'I speak for more than a hundred citizens of Anglia — the names are here, Alders, if you wish to verify.' Mrs. Cotrell waved some sheets of paper. 'We wish to make it clear that many Anglians do not wish to see Dan Fixer back within our walls. While duly grateful for the service the fixers have done, we believe that his home, the home of all the fixers, is the Gaian Center for Investigation and Control of the Hostile Amorphic Native Elements.'

How interesting that she used the full and formal name.

'It is intact,' Mrs. Cotrell went on, 'and suitable for habitation. As Dan Fixer claims there are only a small number of fixers left, there is plenty of accommodation…'

'There are others alive?' Jenny whispered to Gyrth.

'Apparently. It might be best for them to gather there to figure out what to do in the future.'

'True,' Jenny said. But Dan wanted to come in.

He wanted, she suddenly realized, to come home.

Alice Cotrell was listing the many possible dangers a fixer might now present to normal people.

Normal, thought Jenny. How very interesting.

Alderwoman Sillitoe interrupted. 'He seems perfectly normal, Mrs. Rutherford. And he was born and raised here.'

Alice Cotrell stood straighter. 'We do not understand his sort, any more than we understood the hellbanes. Who is to say that the fixers themselves won't turn wild on us one day?'

A murmur rolled around the room, but Jenny couldn't tell if it was shock or approval. She'd never thought of that. When a predator is eliminated, the prey often takes over as pest. She followed the debate, no longer certain what was right.

In the end, she grabbed on to one thing. 'Listen!' she said.

They all stared at her.

'If everyone's afraid of what Dan might be, then someone has to go outside and find out. Yas—'

'Oh, no!' Yas raised a hand. 'We weren't that close.'

'What?'

'Not when he left. I don't know who he was rumpling with then.'

Jenny turned to Tom, hoping the dim lighting hid her blush. 'You're a good friend.'

He turned his beer glass in his hands. 'I don't know, Jenny. It's not that I'm afraid of Dan,' he added quickly. 'I don't think he'd deliberately hurt any of us.'

'Tom!'

'You know better?' Yas demanded. 'Why has he pretended to be dead for weeks?'

That was the overwhelming question. 'I don't know,' Jenny said. 'I just know that someone has to go and find out why he's here and what he wants.' The resistance around the table dragged her words to a halt. 'All right. How many here want Dan back home?'

Eyes shifted. Perhaps some hands twitched, but none went up.

'It depends…'

'We can't decide yet…'

'I need to know…'

'My, my. The committee really is in touch with the mood of the voters, isn't it?'

'If you're so set on this,' said Yas, 'why don't you go and find out what's come home from the war?'

It was a challenge, one Jenny knew Yas didn't expect her to accept.

She turned her attention to the screen, hoping for something that would save her. No. They were consulting some expert about the place of Hellbane U in Gaian society. She didn't want to do this, but she had to. She'd remembered what she'd said when she'd parted from Dan.

'Come back,' she'd said. 'That's an order.'

And he'd replied, 'Yes, ma'am.'

She took a deep breath then looked back around the table. 'I will, then, on one condition.'

After a stunned moment, Tom said, 'You don't have to—'

'If no one else will, I will. But on one condition. I'm your representative. If I come back and say Dan's safe, you all support that.'

'What good will it do?' Rolo asked.

'If necessary, we smuggle him in and carry on the fight from here. Once people see he's just Dan, they'll change. Most of them want the fixing back. Medical technology doesn't fix machines and Earth china. Are we agreed?'